some writing about some things

Homebrew: Dry Irish Stout

I brewed my first all-grain batch on Saturday, and decided to go with a recipe for a simple beer that I had made before using liquid malt extract. One of my first beers was the Dry Irish Stout from Northern Brewer, and it was dead simple and turned out really well. I decided to make something similar, and based my recipe on their All Grain version of the same beer.

As I expected, a first time doing an all-grain batch was a bit confusing and I messed up a number of things. I think that my calculations were correct for most things, but I had trouble getting my water to temperature on time. I didn’t realize how long it would take to get water to temperature in several situations. This resulted in my mash lasting an extra 10 minutes while I waited for my mash out water to hit temperature, then I didn’t measure correctly for my sparge water. I eventually got a full 6.5 gallons, though, and the beer definitely looks like a stout. At 8 hours, it’s happily bubbling away in the fermenter.

I calculated my efficiency at 34.7, which would be about 97%. That seems too good, I’m wondering if I ended up not getting a very good reading from my refractometer. I definitely should consider using the hydrometer in tandem next time.